I know I'm a bit paranoid about disease in general, but I found the results of this study to be rather alarming. It seems that 1/4th of American women have an HPV infection. Hopefully this research will boost efforts to have the vaccine a standard part of those given to children.

2.27.2007

ScienceDaily reports on recent progress toward making a home "fabber", or computer controlled 3d printer that could be used for home manufacturing. This is definitely a technology worth keeping an eye on, if it ever matures it will completely revolutionize the economy and society.

2.23.2007

One of the more interesting new discoveries about chimps is that they appear to use spears to hunt for smaller primates. This comes on top of earlier discoveries that some groups use stones for cracking nuts.

This would seem to indicate that tool using in hominids goes back much further than though, possibly before the homo genus. Unfortunately, there's no chance of simple wooden spears like those the chimpanzees make lasting millions of years, so we may never know for certain.

2.21.2007

It looks like organ printing inches even closer to being a viable medical technolgoy. I fully expect by the time I'm elderly to be able to get replacement organs this way.

"The breakthrough with this technology is that cells now can be precision-placed virtually instantaneously with the materials that make up a scaffold to hold the cells in place," Boland said. Precision placement of the cells is achieved by filling an empty inkjet cartridge with a hydrogel solution (a material that has properties similar to tissue) and another inkjet cartridge with cells. The printing is accomplished much in the way that color photographs are made, activating alternatively the hydrogel and cell nozzles.

2.06.2007

A group of scientists have created a portable refinery that efficiently converts food, paper and plastic trash into electricity. The machine, designed for the U.S. military, would allow soldiers in the field to convert waste into power and could have widespread civilian applications in the future.